Prestimulus oscillations predict visual perception performance between and within subjects

Hanslmayr, Simon; Aslan, Alp; Staudigl, Tobias; Klimesch, Wolfgang; Herrmann, Christoph S.; Bäuml, Karl Heinz

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.07.011

Cited by 650 publications

(576 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Indeed, attention appears to enhance gamma synchrony across cortical areas (20,21), at least for monosynaptically connected cortical areas (35). A desynchronization of alpha synchrony recorded with electroencephalography has long been associated with attention (36-39), and increased alpha power in the EEG or magnetoencephalogram predicts errors in perception tasks (40)(41)(42) and has been suggested to reflect an active attentional suppression mechanism (43-45).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laminar differences in gamma and alpha coherence in the ventral stream

Buffalo

Fries

Landman

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

583

528

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Attention to a stimulus enhances both neuronal responses and gamma frequency synchrony in visual area V4, both of which should increase the impact of attended information on downstream neurons. To determine whether gamma synchrony is common throughout the ventral stream, we recorded from neurons in the superficial and deep layers of V1, V2, and V4 in two rhesus monkeys. We found an unexpected striking difference in gamma synchrony in the superficial vs. deep layers. In all three areas, spike-field coherence in the gamma (40-60 Hz) frequency range was largely confined to the superficial layers, whereas the deep layers showed maximal coherence at low frequencies (6-16 Hz), which included the alpha range. In the superficial layers of V2 and V4, gamma synchrony was enhanced by attention, whereas in the deep layers, alpha synchrony was reduced by attention. Unlike these major differences in synchrony, attentional effects on firing rates and noise correlation did not differ substantially between the superficial and deep layers. The results suggest that synchrony plays very different roles in feedback and feedforward projections. electrophysiology | macaque | oscillation A natomical and physiological studies have characterized the afferent inputs to and efferent inputs from neurons in different layers of visual cortical areas. However, physiological distinctions across layers, such as synchronous interactions, have not been fully identified. We first came across laminar differences in synchrony serendipitously. Gamma-band synchrony, measured either by spike-field or spike-spike interactions across multiple electrodes, is a prominent feature in visual cortex, and several studies have shown that attention enhances gamma-band synchrony in area V4 (1-5). In our first recordings in area V1, we also found prominent gamma-band synchrony, although the effects of attention, if any, were much smaller than what we previously found in V4 (1). However, in our first recordings in area V2 in the lunate sulcus, we were surprised to find hardly any gamma-band synchrony. We initially had no explanation for why V2 should be so different from V1 and V4. Probing at greater electrode depths led to the discovery that V2 cells do show gamma-band synchrony but only at those deeper electrode depths. Because V2 in the lunate sulcus bends under V1, layer 6 cells are closer to V1 on the occipital surface than are layer 1 cells. Thus, our deeper electrode recordings were actually located in the more superficial layers of V2. Because we typically studied the first responsive cells found in any penetration, this must have strongly biased our first recordings in V2 to the deep layers, and these deep layers apparently had little gamma-band synchrony. Conversely, the same tendency to sample the first responsive cells on a penetration would have resulted in a strong bias to record cells in the superficial layers of V1 and V4, from which we recorded directly on the cortical surface. This possibility led us to test whether the deep layers of V1 and V4 were...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laminar differences in gamma and alpha coherence in the ventral stream

Buffalo

Fries

Landman

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

583

528

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“…It was found that covert shifts of attention (i.e., shifts that do not involve eye movements) were locked to oscillations in the frontal eye fields, such that each cycle of the oscillation corresponded to a distinct item. These oscillations occurred in the β frequency range (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34), but the exact frequency was variable across trials and correlated with single-trial reaction times. Thus, the authors suggested that the speed of attentional shifts might be controlled by the frequency of the underlying oscillations (10).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous EEG oscillations reveal periodic sampling of visual attention

Busch

VanRullen

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

551

523

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An important effect of sustained attention is the facilitation of perception. Although the term "sustained" suggests that this beneficial effect endures continuously as long as something is attended, we present electrophysiological evidence that perception at attended locations is actually modulated periodically. Subjects detected brief light flashes that were presented peripherally at locations that were either attended or unattended. We analyzed the correlation between detection performance for attended and unattended stimuli and the phase of ongoing EEG oscillations, which relate to subsecond fluctuations of neuronal excitability. Although on average, detection performance was improved by attention-indicated by reduced detection thresholds at attended locations-we found that detection performance for attended stimuli actually fluctuated over time along with the phase of spontaneous oscillations in the θ (≈7 Hz) frequency band just before stimulus onset. This fluctuation was absent for unattended stimuli. This pattern of results suggests that "sustained" attention in fact exerts its facilitative effect on perception in a periodic fashion.O ur senses are constantly confronted with a flow of information that exceeds the limits of our sensory systems. One mechanism that limits this input to a manageable amount is selective attention-the ability to enhance processing of a particular object or location. The investigation of attention has been central to our understanding of cognition. Here we present evidence for a largely unexplored feature of selective attention: its periodic rather than continuous operation.The most prominent effect of attention is the facilitation of perception-selected information is processed more efficiently (1, 2) or faster (3). One example of this facilitation is enhanced contrast sensitivity at attended locations (4, 5). Two types of selective attention are usually distinguished: transient automatic attention and sustained voluntary attention (6, 7). Transient attention is captured automatically by sudden salient events, whereas sustained attention can be controlled at will. Although the term "sustained" suggests that the facilitative effect of attention endures continuously as long as attention is deployed at a particular location, it is conceivable that attention operates in a periodic rather than a continuous fashion (8,9). This periodicity of attention is implicit in many visual search tasks in which attention is assumed to switch successively between the different display elements (10-12). On the basis of modeling of human psychometric functions in a signal detection task, VanRullen et al. (8) recently proposed that attention could sample information at a rate of approximately seven items per second-no matter whether attention was focused on multiple targets or on just a single item. A similar attention-driven periodic sampling mechanism (albeit at a different frequency of ≈13 Hz) has been suggested to account for illusory motion reversals in the continuous wagon-wheel illusion (9,...

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“…To obtain the mean levels of phase synchronization in each block, the same procedure as in the study by Hanslmayr et al (2007) was applied. This procedure estimates the mean level of phase synchrony for each block by calculating the single-trial phase deviation from the mean phase, applying the circular variance procedure proposed by Fisher (1993).…”

Section: Analysis Of Phase Synchronization (Experiments 1 and 2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prefrontally Driven Downregulation of Neural Synchrony Mediates Goal-Directed Forgetting

et al. 2012

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Neural synchronization between distant cell assemblies is crucial for the formation of new memories. To date, however, it remains unclear whether higher-order brain regions can adaptively regulate neural synchrony to control memory processing in humans. We explored this question in two experiments using a voluntary forgetting task. In the first experiment, we simultaneously recorded electroencephalography along with fMRI. The results show that a reduction in neural synchrony goes hand-in-hand with a BOLD signal increase in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) when participants are cued to forget previously studied information. In the second experiment, we directly stimulated the left dlPFC with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation during the same task, and show that such stimulation specifically boosts the behavioral forgetting effect and induces a reduction in neural synchrony. These results suggest that prefrontally driven downregulation of long-range neural synchronization mediates goal-directed forgetting of long-term memories.

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Prestimulus oscillations predict visual perception performance between and within subjects

Cited by 650 publications

References 42 publications

Laminar differences in gamma and alpha coherence in the ventral stream

Laminar differences in gamma and alpha coherence in the ventral stream

Spontaneous EEG oscillations reveal periodic sampling of visual attention

Prefrontally Driven Downregulation of Neural Synchrony Mediates Goal-Directed Forgetting

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